The fear - a journey out of anxiety
By Bev Aisbett
I'm pounding along the footpath, somewhere in the suburban streets
of Sydney. I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going;
it doesn't matter. I will walk for hours if need be.
I must look the way I feel - frenzied, a bit wild, out-of-control.
With each step, I chant a kind of mantra: "I'm all right, it'll
be OK, I'm all right", but I am hardly convinced. I feel far from
all right. I am panting, not from exertion, but from fear. Sheer
terror is propelling me along this street, and the next one and
the next. This fear is breathtaking, all pervasive, yet there
is no one following me, and there is no escape, for I am running
from a feeling.
The calm, banal aspects of suburban life around me are somehow
charged with a new, sinister edge. The colours of this golden
morning seem somehow unbearably shrill; there is no warmth in
them, no comfort. My heart is rioting in my chest, beating so
hard, I feel as if it will crash through my rib cage at any moment.
"I'm all right, it'll be OK", over and over, until at last, after
more than an hour, it is over. I sag into the doorway of an abandoned
shop and weep with relief.
That was October, 1991, nine long years ago. On what was to be
a pleasant trip to Sydney, I had detoured down another path instead.
I had begun my journey into crippling anxiety. What I was experiencing
in that suburban street was a panic attack, in all its awesome
ferocity.
The word 'panic' is bandied about with casual abandon in our society.
We use the word to describe a fretfulness over a work deadline
or being late for an appointment or if the main course for a dinner
party is ruined. But there is little comparison between these
experiences and the paralysing terror of a panic attack.
The most frightening aspect of the first panic attack is that
it appears to come out of the blue. The sufferer is left stunned
in its wake. They are left with only two certainties: that their
life has been forever changed and that they never, ever want to
feel that fear again.
Within this thinking lies the beginnings of what, too often, becomes
a long and painful pattern - anxiety disorder. "If I did not see
this coming", reasons the sufferer, "then it can strike again
at any time" and so they remain alert, watchful, more and more
anxious. They will begin avoiding situations or places that they
associate with the first attack, and slowly this fear of fear
gains momentum, the avoidance becomes expanded to an ever-widening
set of places and circumstances and the thinking becomes more
and more catastrophic. Every situation begins to have a "What
if?" fear attached to it.
By the time I returned from Sydney, three days later, fear had
certainly gained a firm hold and it was not going to let go without
a struggle.
And what a struggle! My day would begin in the wee hours, when
I was wrenched from a meagre four hour's sleep by fear, heralding
the next 20 hours of torture that lay ahead. My heart rate sat
between 100 and 120 most of the time, and, if, through sheer exhaustion,
I tried to rest, the palpitations would virtually lift me off
the bed. I felt haunted, possessed. My thoughts were a wall of
white noise; thoughts of hopelessness, despair, desperation, all
jostling for position. The smallest task required a Herculean
effort as I tried to fight my way through this internal din to
extract one clear decision, one moment of focus that would enable
me to act. And worst of all, like many before me and many whom
I now teach, I could not imagine how it could ever be any different
from here on. Having seen fear, surely there was no way that I
could now "unsee" it. I was at war with my own mind, and it with
me, I was trapped in a fate worse than death wall-to-wall terror
for the rest of my life.
Writing this now, it is as difficult for me to imagine the sheer
intensity of what I was experiencing, as it is to try to describe
it to someone who has never known anxiety. It is like trying to
imagine great physical pain when it has passed - hard to remember,
and of course, there is no great desire to. To see it etched into
the faces before me in my class is reminder enough.
So how did I get here from there? How did I move from that utter
hopelessness to a place where I am actually grateful for what
I have gained from living that experience? It seems to be a long
gap, but that is part of the illusion.
First, some inner wisdom told me (along with a need to eat) that
I had to keep working, had to keep going. Aside from the practicalities,
I sensed, on some deeper level, that if I gave up on that, I would
be giving up on life. Since my work was as a newly established
cartoonist and illustrator, trying to be funny when I felt anything
but, was challenging to say the least. But this work not only
saved my sanity by forcing me out into the world each day, but
my cartoons actually became my greatest personal ally in working
through this problem. I began to draw the cartoons to serve as
visual reassurances (having exhausted human resources), devices
to take the sting out of the fear, and as tools to break down
my understanding of my thinking into bite-size pieces. And, of
course, I drew my fear, my 'it' and in so doing, brought him down
to size.
Little did I know it at the time, but while I was scribbling these
little images on the page, I was at the same time carving out
my future, my life purpose. For eventually, these images became
a book, and then another and then another and then I would became
a counsellor, and a teacher, all as a result of a meeting with
fear.
The journey out of anxiety is a big one. It does not happen overnight,
nor is there a quick fix, for this is not just about how one 'does'
anxiety, but how one lives life in general. There is much to address,
own and change.
The greatest change must centre around thinking, and thinking
about anxiety in particular. There is a tendency for the sufferer
to catastrophise, to think in very rigid, black and white terms
and to place enormous (and over inflated) value on the approval
of others. Their inner dialogue tends to be rigid and non-permissive:
littered with should, must, have to, etc, in keeping with a generally
perfectionist nature. There is a tendency to be hard on oneself
and to set unrealistically high standards for self and others.
There is little self-nurture or rest built into their daily lives
and coping strategies that tend to undermine rather than support.
The person needs to learn how to 'let go', for control is also
a key factor. Since sufferers feel unsafe, they try to control
their world by cutting out any nasty surprises. Ironically (of
course!) it is this very control that leads to the feeling of
being totally out of control. 'Letting go' of outcomes, expectations,
deadlines, the past, even of fear itself, is a tricky process
for someone who feels unsafe, but it is crucial. In fact, the
journey out of anxiety can be likened to prising someone's fingers
from the cliff-face one by one, until they feel safe enough to
free-fall, and trusting that there will be arms to catch them
at the bottom.
Finally, the sufferer needs to learn how to create a new relationship
with the fear. Partly, this involves a level of acceptance, but
mainly, this is about turning to confront the fear and seeing
one's own face there. For it is no more than one's own power turned
inside out. Harnessed, it becomes a formidable force for change.
The journey out of anxiety then ceases to be an ordeal and becomes
an adventure: a great odyssey into self.
Bev Aisbett is the author of "Living with IT - a survivor's
guide to Panic Attacks", "Living IT Up - the advanced survivor's
guide to Anxiety-free living", and "Letting IT Go - Attaining
awareness out of Adversity".
